It's not
about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.

I write stuff. Below is something I've been working on. I'm not sure what to do with it, but at
any rate, here it is. I call it, "The Day the Machines Stopped."

The real transformation began when humans made electronic devices that could be held in the palm of
their hands. The machines of locomotion and production that came before, the automobiles, the
bicycles, the conveyor belts, elevators and Bessemer furnaces, these were the neanderthals of the
technological epoch that was to come. First calculators came to do the adding and multiplying that
humans used to do with their own minds, or paper and pencil. Then computers were built and data got
analyzed with electronic ones and zeroes. Visual displays and incredibly rich interaction with the
user enabled access to an almost endless collection of information and video-graphy because of what
was called the internet. But these were just the infants in the stream of wow that evolved from the
process that Michael Faraday discovered in his laboratories hooking up copper wires and magnets
while using chemical solutions for the source of electric currents. Radios, Transistors and
light-emitting diodes, the television and video projection, were then combined to produce the video
game console. Soon the i-pod and their next of kin, the cell phone, added yet more interconnections
with the technological infrastructure. Once the internet, email, text messaging, and broadband
streaming bounced on the scene of everyday living, the human race had entered a new phase of it's
evolutionary existence.

But the biology and bone structures of humans couldn't change so it was the mental aspects of human
culture which evolved instead. People forgot various aspects of their humanity as they replaced
their daily lives with technological devices not much larger than the palms of their hands.
Interaction with life shrunk down to a 6 inch by 10 inch rectangular surface of images and sounds
transmitted to the dark sunglass lens that people began to put on their eyes No one acknowledged
the presence of anyone else unless they sent an electronic signal to their cellular device, or the
person's removed the sunglasses and decided to unplug from such devices. Automobiles became driven
by computers and high-tech radar/sonar sensory equipment. Humans often slept on their way to work,
or play video games while the cars drove them home or to the supermarket big box chain stores that
sold everything now. People visited one another and had their conversations mostly by video
conferencing or by sending text messages in chat rooms. There was the rare occasion when two
strangers would interact beyond a few polite words of "excuse me" or "are you waiting in line", but
even in social or community situations most people remained plugged in to the tech devices that sent
them constant images to the sunglasses and sounds to the small ear plugs. More usually, when people
were talking out loud, they were talking to no one in the immediate vicinity, but rather to someone
on the other end of the connection to the ether of telecommunications.

The devices began to do all of the thinking after a few generations. Instantly need a fact or need
to research some historical matter, it would never take longer than a minute to get the information
you wanted, along with highly detailed visual maps and lots of short video clips. The devices could
tell you how much money you had in your wallet or your bank account. They would also show you in
the margins of the sunglasses the price of the items you are buying, along with how much you have
left after the purchase. They were also designed to completely absorb the personality of their
owners, and were coded specifically to be able to listen to verbalized problems, and respond with
consoling language. They could surprisingly give decent advice about very intricate matters and
complex situations, and although the advice was often not followed, the devices were never
judgmental or sanctimonious. The devices would suggest what you should eat for dinner, what new
restaurant to go to, which route was quicker to the park, who might be an interesting date for
Friday evening, or whether it might be time to go shopping for some new slacks or different looking
blouses. They would organize the entire day's events and then remind you throughout the day so you
wouldn't forget. The devices would even tell you the name of the people you encounter with a secret
whisper in the ear bud, saving you the age-old embarrassment of forgetting someone's name that had
plagued centuries of old-fashion human folk before the new inventions came on the scene in the
latter 21st century.

After two generations, people became incredibly forgetful. Some of them never took off their
sun-glass tech devices, and a new surgery had appeared that was implanting surface screens over the
eye sockets of adults for as little as what was the equivalent of a month's salary for the average
legal secretary. Women had long ago already started putting silicon in their breasts or puffing up
their lips and "lifting" their cheek skin. Men began to have silicon putty additions to their penal
organs not long afterwards. So the eye socket surfaces was only a logical conclusion. The
normative bonding with technology begins to create new associative experiences that could never have
been conceived possible, because the illusion is that there can be a controlled and separated
experience. Once the relationship between man and machine is formed, the process of merging
continues unabated, inexorably moving towards the final conclusion, when our devotion to the
machines destroys the basis of the humanity that created them.

The machines will stop. Eventually we will not be able to produce enough energy to power the grids
that give us the electricity. The metals we use to power the devices will become exhausted. The
fuels that are now used will no longer exist, and solar energy will be how everything is powered,
but the limitations in metal and resource extraction will render impotent the dispersion of solar
technology. There will be too many people, and too few resources. Humans will be lucky if they can
still feed themselves.

However belief systems die hard, and a lot of people looked at the universe or considered the
historical timeline like it was an elaborate fairy tale or something written down and located in the
archaic pages of ancient books. Truth and reality have always been contested arguments, but the
"Here and Now, You Only Live Once" HAN YOLO crowd was not going to become a rallying cry for change
and evolution while being tantalized with the "Future is Now" slogan. Which is a stupid saying
really. Of course the future is now. The future has always been synonymous with the now, because
it's the only thing humans can ever truly know. Except that now, the now is becoming replaced by
machines, which means that we now no longer know what we used to know, and the now has become just
another amorphous entity displaced into the background by some eulogized electronic consciousness.

And alas, humans forget everything by the 5th generation of the mental implants that became standard
issue, in the 2nd century of the second millennium. Adverts for special assistance for the disabled
gradually evolved over 50 years into benefits for students taking difficult courses. One such
commercial involved a student who didn't understand what the college professor was saying, such that
the operating system of the mental implant interpreted and decode the words emanating from the mouth
of the instructor and then spoke this content into the mind of the student. The student then went
on to get an A in the course and all was good. Only two hundred thousand dollars, but the deal also
involved free lifetime upgrades, so apparently the large upfront cost was worth it, considering that
the presumed jobs that resulted would be involve salaries in the millions of dollars.

Meanwhile the planet became more degraded and toxic by the decade. The smog appeared everywhere and
required humans to have to wear masks over their mouths and nose, or their lungs would sear and they
would die within 10 years. Body suits and eye goggles came 50 years later, because apparently the
atmosphere had become so noxious and irritating to the skin that cancers would occur rapidly and the
surfaces of the eye would constantly sting. Humans no longer even experienced the idea of another
human being. They walked around the earth encased in protective suits, spoken to by computers that
interpreted reality.

The "Unplug movement" was inevitable. It should have been expected. Nevertheless, the media
organizations continued the tradition of completely misunderstanding and misrepresenting reality,
and such persons who existed outside of the official voices were considered "radicals" ,
"nihilists", "whiners" or "idealists". The progress of civilization depended completely upon the
utter destruction of the ecosystem that feeds the humans who live on the planet, but the denial that
refused to understand this reality was thicker and deeper that the width of the entire cosmos,
because human psychology also depends upon a mythology of the universe that abstracts the larger
reality into practical circumstantial units of simplicity. We do not think of Cows with every
double cheese hamburger we devour. We don't consider the polluted areas of the world when we drive
400 miles in a car in 8 hours of time. After the moment has passed, we move on towards new
illusions. Maybe we remember the past, maybe we update different versions of the past, but
regardless of what we do, the past is gone. All we know is right now, right here and now, and if
the past looks different through these modern day eyes, so what? We can always change the story and
make excuses as we go down the road. No big deal. Right?

Except one day. One day after the gradual degradation of all that we thought was normal. The
inability to drink or even touch surface water because of the poisons that would leech up through
the soil after centuries of fertilizer and toxic residue from all the contents that lifted into the
air out of exhaust engines. The gradual acceptance of masks that filtered out the particulates
which became more prevalent in the atmosphere, and were known to be highly carcinogenic. The need
to filter the blood with machines once a year because of all the toxics that were in the food. The
need for couples to have the male sperm cells "cleaned" because of the increased frequency of
defunct spermatozoa.

One day. When the rivers have dried up because the climate is hurricane and flood oriented and the
low temperatures are in the the 90 degree Fahrenheit range for 70% of the year.

One day. When not only will the horses be gone, but so too the machines. No more automobiles or
planes or huge super ships crossing the ocean, or large factories. Gone. Mankind will be reduced
to the naked animal. Moss will grow over the rubble of the buildings that had existed.

One day. One day the Earth will begin to heal from the thoughtlessly reckless and stupid manner in
which mankind has evolved to live in coexistence with the ecosystem of the planet Earth. We
fantasize about replicas of ourselves who colonize other planets and encounter other beings whom we
ourselves have never encountered. But all of the illusion is just well scripted and entertaining
fiction, because, whoopsie, humanity actually turns out to be a freak accident of interstellar
random energy displacement in the universe, and nothing guarantees we will be able to live on this
garden of eden forever. This is the root of all religion, the root of God and Gods, this chance
that humans have to live, breed, and continue the species into perpetuity. The apple that Adam ate
was metaphor.

Sunday, 24 November 2013 at 10h 36m 54s

What is happening in Ohio

Click here and here for information about how the charter schools are sucking up so many
students in 53 school districts of Michigan that the school districts just had their bonds rated
downward by Moody's and are in danger of having to expire within 5 years.

This is the plan. It is being conducted within every state. They want to destroy the public school
system and have it replaced by private for-profit charter schools. The first phase of this plan was
the Leave No Child
Behind Act of 2001 where the testing of schools was incorporated into a federal rating system
that automatically triggered a response by the schools who didn't meet certain criteria. Schools
and school districts who were considered "failed" or got "program improvement status" enabled a
trigger provision in the law that allowed charter schools to become permitted -- regardless of local
and state laws.

It was a poison pill, or magic bullet, depending on your perspective. It never was about
educational reform.

This is happening now. In every single state. Google it.

Sunday, 24 November 2013 at 10h 13m 11s

JFK 1962 quote

[T]he great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but
the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our
forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of
opinion without the discomfort of thought.

Mythology distracts us everywhere—in government as in business, in politics as in economics, in
foreign affairs as in domestic affairs. But today I want to particularly consider the myth and
reality in our national economy. In recent months many have come to feel, as I do, that the dialog
between the parties—between business and government, between the government and the public—is
clogged by illusion and platitude and fails to reflect the true realities of contemporary American
society.

The above is just a small piece of a larger and longer speech, read the entire speech here.

Here's the first take down of the economic mythology pushed by the oligarchs of Kennedy's day.
Please note the sophistication of the slap down.

Let us take first the question of the size and shape of government. The myth here is that government
is big, and bad—and steadily getting bigger and worse. Obviously this myth has some excuse for
existence. It is true that in recent history each new administration has spent much more money than
its predecessor. Thus President Roosevelt outspent President Hoover, and with allowances for the
special case of the Second World War, President Truman outspent President Roosevelt. Just to prove
that this was not a partisan matter, President Eisenhower then outspent President Truman by the
handsome figure of $182 billion. It is even possible, some think, that this trend may continue.

But does it follow from this that big government is growing relatively bigger? It does not—for the
fact is for the last 15 years, the Federal Government—and also the Federal debt—and also the Federal
bureaucracy—have grown less rapidly than the economy as a whole. If we leave defense and space
expenditures aside, the Federal Government since the Second World War has expanded less than any
other major sector of our national life—less than industry, less than commerce, less than
agriculture, less than higher education, and very much less than the noise about big government.

The truth about big government is the truth about any other great activity—it is complex. Certainly
it is true that size brings dangers—but it is also true that size can bring benefits. Here at Yale
which has contributed so much to our national progress in science and medicine, it may be proper for
me to mention one great and little noticed expansion of government which has brought strength to our
whole society—the new role of our Federal Government as the major patron of research in science and
in medicine. Few people realize that in 1961, in support of all university research in science and
medicine, three dollars out of every four came from the Federal Government. I need hardly point out
that this has taken place without undue enlargement of Government control—that American scientists
remain second to none in their independence and in their individualism.

I am not suggesting that Federal expenditures cannot bring some measure of control. The whole thrust
of Federal expenditures in agriculture have been related by purpose and design to control, as a
means of dealing with the problems created by our farmers and our growing productivity. Each sector,
my point is, of activity must be approached on its own merits and in terms of specific national
needs. Generalities in regard to federal expenditures, therefore, can be misleading—each case,
science, urban renewal, education, agriculture, natural resources, each case must be determined on
its merits if we are to profit from our unrivaled ability to combine the strength of public and
private purpose.

And the smack about debt and deficits was present back in 1962 just as it is still to this very day

Still in the area of fiscal policy, let me say a word about deficits. The myth persists that Federal
deficits create inflation and budget surpluses prevent it. Yet sizeable budget surpluses after the
war did not prevent inflation, and persistent deficits for the last several years have not upset our
basic price stability. Obviously deficits are sometimes dangerous—and so are surpluses. But honest
assessment plainly requires a more sophisticated view than the old and automatic cliche that
deficits automatically bring inflation.

There are myths also about our public debt. It is widely supposed that this debt is growing at a
dangerously rapid rate. In fact, both the debt per person and the debt as a proportion of our gross
national product have declined sharply since the Second World War. In absolute terms the national
debt since the end of World War II has increased only 8 percent, while private debt was increasing
305 percent, and the debts of State and local governments—on whom people frequently suggest we
should place additional burdens—the debts of State and local governments have increased 378 percent.
Moreover, debts, public and private, are neither good nor bad, in and of themselves. Borrowing can
lead to over-extension and collapse—but it can also lead to expansion and strength. There is no
single, simple slogan in this field that we can trust.

And next, we have Kennedy addressing the Confidence fairy, which has been in the playbook of the
oligarchs since the Civil War.

Finally, I come to the problem of confidence. Confidence is a matter of myth and also a matter of
truth—and this time let me take the truth of the matter first.

It is true—and of high importance—that the prosperity of this country depends on the assurance that
all major elements within it will live up to their responsibilities. If business were to neglect its
obligations to the public, if labor were blind to all public responsibility, above all, if
government were to abandon its obvious—and statutory—duty of watchful concern for our economic
health-if any of these things should happen, then confidence might well be weakened and the danger
of stagnation would increase. This is the true issue of confidence.

But there is also the false issue—and its simplest form is the assertion that any and all
unfavorable turns of the speculative wheel—however temporary and however plainly speculative in
character—are the result of, and I quote, "a lack of confidence in the national administration."
This I must tell you, while comforting, is not wholly true. Worse, it obscures the reality—which is
also simple. The solid ground of mutual confidence is the necessary partnership of government with
all of the sectors of our society in the steady quest for economic progress.

Corporate plans are not based on a political confidence in party leaders but on an economic
confidence in the Nation's ability to invest and produce and consume. Business had full confidence
in the administrations in power in 1929, 1954, 1958, and 1960—but this was not enough to prevent
recession when business lacked full confidence in the economy. What matters is the capacity of the
Nation as a whole to deal with its economic problems and its opportunities.

The stereotypes I have been discussing distract our attention and divide our effort. These
stereotypes do our Nation a disservice, not just because they are exhausted and irrelevant, but
above all because they are misleading—because they stand in the way of the solution of hard and
complicated facts. It is not new that past debates should obscure present realities. But the damage
of such a false dialogue is greater today than ever before simply because today the safety of all
the world—the very future of freedom—depends as never before upon the sensible and clearheaded
management of the domestic affairs of the United States.

The truth is that oligarchy will always say it needs "confidence" in order to "invest" or spend its
massive pile of idle wealth for anything other than itself. Without "confidence" the oligarchs will
spend a lot of money and fund a lot of activities that appear independent, to say a lot of nasty
irrelevant and deceptive things about the government and government officials the oligarchs don't
like unless they bend over backwards doing every single thing the oligarchy pays them to do.

Such officials are then called reasonable, non-partisan, practical or fair-minded, and then suddenly
find themselves with a lot of mainstream press interested in their opinions and day to day affairs.

Sunday, 10 November 2013 at 10h 14m 38s

The difference between Democrats and Republicans

The above graphic is the jobs added (blue) or jobs lost (red) per month. Notice that the turn
around in Red happened right after April or May of 2009 -- the first 4 months of the Obama
administration.

Competence has it's value. As disappointing to the promise as the Obama administration has been over
the last 6 years, the basic competence of the government has vastly improved. Cronies and
bureaucrats will still exist, but the level of competency will not become compromised because all
Democrats believe in the value and possibility of government, so they have a level of respect for
the integrity of government that is impossible with the Rethuglican's.

Republicans do not like government, and some of them hate government. They utter cute phrases like
"The government is the problem" and when they are in government they appoint corrupt idiots who
serve the purpose of discrediting the government that is supposed to be the problem. They make loud
noises about cutting microscopic budgets that help poor people and/or the middle class, but say
nothing, or wax patriotic about vastly expensive military or privatization schemes that very often
have no merit or purpose other than to pad the profits of some insider/connected firm. Then they
are repaid by the same consortium of business interests with huge yearly consulting fees after
retiring from 16 years service in the government. It's not about free markets, so much as it is
about a free ride to wealth. Save maybe a tiny few who are naive fools, all of the Republicans are
craven political opportunists.

The Democrats on the other hand are more sophisticated in their sophistry. Some call themselves
"practical" which really means they are hesitant to vote against what the big money interests want.
I think they probably constitute 30 or 40% of the party. The other 70 or 60 percent are real
people or genuinely concerned thoughtful citizens. Some of these will get sucked up into the
corruption, because money and power will and does change people, but not all will fall into the
clutches of the vicious oligarchy. A few will even be able to ignore the pressures of media and the
framing of events that is part of the systematic war perpetrated on the American mind by the
oligarchy every single day.

A few. But hey, I'll take 10, 20, or 30 percent over ZERO any day of the week.

Sunday, 10 November 2013 at 10h 50m 15s

Social Mobility in the United States per Country or Municipality

The chance a child raised in the bottom fifth (the lowest 20%) of income that rose into the top
fifth (upper 20%) of income.

The graph is a New York Times graphic [ Click here ] from a Harvard study released last summer.

The study can be found HERE .
It's called the Equality of Opportunity Project.

Here's a list of more than 10% from the cities with the largest commuting zones --along with Los
Angeles, Detroit, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Memphis.

Bakersfield California 12.4

Santa Barbara California 11.8

Salt Lake City Utah 11.5

San Francisco California 11.2

San Jose California 11.2

Des Moines Iowa 11.1

Scranton Pennsylvania 11.1

Toms River New Jersey 10.6

Seattle Washington 10.4

San Diego California 10.4

Santa Rosa California 10.3

Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 10.3

Modesto California 10.2

Madison Wisconsin 10.2

Reading Pennsylvania 10.2

Honolulu Hawaii 10.1

Sacramento California 10

...
Los Angeles California 9.6

New Orleans Louisiana 6.3%

Detroit Michigan 5.1%

Atlanta Georgia 4.0%

Memphis Tennessee 2.6%

Look at San Francisco and San Jose, ranked 4th & 5th, at 11.2 percent. 8 cities in the above list
are from California. Calfornia also represents half
of the complete list above 10% (regardless of size) that isn't part of the Dakota Shale Oil
economy. All the regions with 4% or below are in the deep south, where God is king and poverty
means you are lazy, so why should God-fearing working citizens pay taxes to the welfare state when
people should have the choice to give to charity?

Hmmm, yea that's why you morons hover around 4% and have the worst system of institutionalized
poverty in the entire nation. This is why the rest of the nation has rates above 6 percent. This
is why all those poor folk who live in your regions move somewhere else. What happened? You got
rid of welfare programs and pre-school or after school program subsidies because you thought it made
people dependent on big government and more prone to stay impoverished. Instead the opposite happens.

This is why people live in California. Economic Opportunity and social mobility are at the highest
levels of the entire nation. The economy is also very diversified, and isn't dominated by any one
industry or based on temporary resource extraction profits but on an
economic infrastructure in which the state government actually invests with taxes. Californians as a
whole support building the necessary economic infrastructure and Californians also vote at high
levels to support spending on infrastructure, whether its' roads, education, irrigation canals,
ports, bridges, transportation networks, airports, recreation centers or environmental conservation.

If you want a list of all Metropolitan Areas (regardless of size) , Click here

If you want a list for the top 100 largest cities with the largest commuting zones, Click here

Sunday, 10 November 2013 at 9h 41m 34s

War is Fun

Here's a poem I wrote last Thursday.

War is Fun

War is fun
fun fun fun
go get a joystick
and shoot a gun
pretend like you're superior
and when you die
it's just another turn

push the button
and start again
because war is fun
no moral hazard for the babies you kill
no sentimental attachment to the comrades who die
it's just a fucking button man
just push the fucking button man
get that interactive thrill
cuz war is fun

war hidden behind a flat screen Liquid crystal display
war summed up into points
and little trinkets that stack up on the side of the screen
to remind you of just how awesome
you are
war is cool
and you are a stud
a veritable video game monster

this real world stuff is for the birds
you can go beyond the trivial burdens of life and die
because you are the Coptic warrior
the Raven
the Truth Seeker
or whatever you call yourself

the computer code will nevertheless flatter you all the time
scripted by the humans who wrote it
and now it rotates and repeats the same message
and the entity that is your self
is just a nondescript sequence of forgotten events no one will ever see or share
like figments of your imagination

except
it isn't your imagination
because you aren't imagining a fucking thing
all of the images you see are outside of your brain
all the sounds
all of the words
are programmed and saved on the hard drive

and you
you are just a follower who gives it's eyeballs to the master in exchange
for a mirage.

Tuesday, 22 October 2013 at 18h 22m 20s

Sorry about the lapse

Yea I know, it's been more than 30 days since my last blog post. Oh dear, I missed out on commenting
about the obvious insanity of some fools who call themselves Republicans.

I've been doing my job as a teacher of 156 high school students and practicing guitar, and so lately
that's enough for what I can handle. Not that it takes much effort to type a blog post, it's just
that the mental energy created when I engage in these expository essays has been too much for me to
handle as of the last 6 weeks or so. I still read the press and the various blogs I like to check
out, but that hasn't translated into a blog post.

If you've paid attention over the last decade to this blog, there are periods of time every year
when I go dark. Then suddenly I react with a spate of blogs and become more consistent. That's
about ready to happen, and this is probably the first in some more regular postings.

Now we will get back to the witches’ trials. Tie them up. Throw them in deep water, if they
float they are guilty and are burned alive. If they sink, they are innocent, and get a xian burial.

Polygraph tests have all of the reliability of drug sniffing dogs (proven beyond a doubt to
respond strictly to the movements of their handlers) and witch sniffers in Africa.

I’ve had 3 polygraph tests in my life. Passed all of them with flying colors and guilty as sin
on every evaluation. Sociopaths can beat any polygraph. I had to tell the “polygraph operator” in
the second “evaluation” where she was supposed to attach the contacts to my skins. Then I coached
her in the correct ways to phrase the questions so the only answer had to be yes or no. If I had
attach the correct points and started asking her questions, I’d have had her confessing to killing
Christ.

Fire every person that pretends to be a polygraph operator. They are all on high paid welfare
and produce nothing but misery for innocent people and have no credibility with we sociopaths that
can fly past them.

Find one single instance of a polygraph outing a traitor and I will consider believing that they
have some use. You will never find one.

Nor will you find a successful NSA operation. If they had a stone cold solid proof of their
usefulness on one single operation, the leaks on those successes would be pouring out cast in solid
gold. What a waste of time, material and treasure. Fire them all, send them home on full pay and
allowances and save money by not paying the exorbitant fees they are paying the Internet providers
for what should cost pennies a day.

Agee was a hero. Ellsberg is a hero. Assange is a hero. Manning is a hero. Snowden is a hero.

The NSA, CIA and the alphabet soup people are all traitors to the constitution, their oaths of
office and their fellow americans. Offer them a promotion and they would pimp their mothers for a
corner office.

Exactly. These methods of algorithmic spying are going to have so many false positives that the
authorities are going to waste countless money and time chasing ghosts and innocent people. The
innocent people will have added costs and pain and suffering. All of the terrorists (both internal
and external, white supremacist groups and international extremists) were ferreted out by
traditional methods, not by the spying apparatus. The effectiveness is less than 10%.

What it's really all about is to provide the elite with a means to keep track of those persons and
groups from which they feel most threatened. Union leaders, journalists, true patriots (like Al
Gore and Brad Friedman -- both of whom were 'spied' upon), and
organizers, for instance. The spokepeople who say otherwise, are delusional (Diane Feinstein), or
(in the case of Clapper) deliberately lying.

Click here for the Washington Post timeline of NSA privacy violations. There
are plenty of links and other related stories too.

Keep in mind that this stuff is confusing and bureaucratic on purpose. The people who run these
entities are from a small group of interconnected families and friends of the families, or hired
jackals who do the dirty deeds knowing they will have payback for life. It's not an obvious
aristocracy, and is more like a governing class akin to what this country saw in the latter post
civil war 1800's when government patronage was all about kickbacks and bribery schemes that were
used to fund the party war chests.

Saturday, 17 August 2013 at 11h 17m 21s

The Debunked and Reused bad arguments against common sense

This goes back to the early 18th century, and the ideas of David Ricardi, and were then refuted in
the same way they can be refuted today.

Here goes. At the systemic level, all those businesses who pay minimum wage will have a labor
increase. Prices might rise, but not necessarily, because in a competitive market, the incentive to
raise prices will become tempered by the incentive to keep and woo customers. Some businesses will
absorb more of the increased labor costs than others, but all businesses will absorb at least some
of the labor costs, because otherwise they would lose revenue by raising prices since consumers will
for the most part shop where goods are cheaper.

People who assume raising the minimum wage kills jobs forget that the cost of labor is not the
motivation behind hiring someone for a job. If there is a revenue stream available, a business will
hire the necessary labor in which to manage the revenue stream. Profits are not going to decrease,
and if they do, such profits might decrease by barely 0.1 percent, and then only in the short term.
Once the market readjusts to the cost of labor, the profit margins will slowly revert back to normal
levels. As Ricardi showed 200 years ago, profit margins are not affected by the cost of labor.
Profit margins are affected by the cost of supplies, resources, transportation, and mismanagement --
not the cost of
labor.

This is an old argument used by the unenlightened elite to justify their foolish exploitation of the
masses. A rising tide can lift all boats, but only if the wealthy are willing to invest in the
distribution of mass society. An elite that prefers to insolate itself and procreate within itself
(like some Chinese and Russian monarchies of the not so distant past) will impoverish the masses and
blindly misunderstand the problem.